And even though there are thousands and thousands of quotes about kids out there, you’ll especially love these 250 best quotes about children we gathered—perfect for Universal Children’s Day which falls on Nov. 20, 2022. Some of these quotes about kids and children are relatable, some are cute, some give advice and some are just plain funny. You may even recognize a few of these parent quotes and the people who said them. Read on to see all 250 of these quotes about children, including son quotes and daughter quotes. If you find a quote about kids you love, share it with someone who you think will feel the same way!
250 Quotes About Children
- “A person’s a person, no matter how small.” – Dr. Seuss
- “A child is an uncut diamond.” – Austin O’Malley
- “Always kiss your children goodnight—even if they’re already asleep.” – H. Jackson Brown, JR.
- “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” – Albert Einstein
- “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.” – Khaled Hosseini
- “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” – Margaret Mead
- “All little girls should be told they are pretty.” – Marilyn Monroe
- “Children really brighten up a household. They never turn the lights off.” – Ralph Bus
- “Having one child makes you a parent; having two, you are a referee.” – David Frost
- “The real magic wand is the child’s own mind.” – Jose Ortega y Gasset
- “There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.” – Walt Streightiff
- “At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experience of life; the thorns should never be plucked from his roses.” – Ellen Key
- “Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded.” – Jess Lair
- “Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children.” – Princess Diana
- “Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” – Mr. Rogers
- “The magic, the wonder, the mystery and the innocence of a child’s heart are the seeds of creativity that will heal the world.” – Michael Jackson
- “Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.” – John F. Kennedy
- “Kids deserve the right to think that they can change the world.” – Lois Lowry
- “Adults follow paths. Children explore.” – Neil Gaiman
- “The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.” – Denis Waitley
- “Little boys should never be sent to bed. They always wake up a day older.” – Peter Pan
- “Children are mirrors, they reflect back to us all we say and do.” – Pam Leo
- “Give children toys that are powered by their imagination, not by batteries.”– H. Jackson Brown
- “Children are the true connoisseurs, what’s precious to them has no price, only value.” – Bel Kaufman
- “Children re-invent your world for you.” – Susan Sarandon
- “In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.”– Erma Bombeck
- “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” – Frederick Douglass
- “The best way to make children good is to make them happy.” – Oscar Wilde
- “The soul is healed by being with children.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” – Anne Frank
- “Noble fathers have noble children.” – Euripides 32.“You don’t raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they’ll turn out to be heroes, even if it’s just in your own eyes.” – Wally Schirra
- “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other wings.” – Goeth
- “Children are our most valuable resource.” – Herbert Hoover
- “Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.” – Charles R. Swindoll
- “If you want children to continue dreaming to the moon and beyond, then dream with them, both by sharing your fervent dreams, and by diving heart first into their own.” – Vince Gowmon
- “Even if people are still very young, they shouldn’t be prevented from saying what they think.” – Anne Frank
- “To every child—I dream of a world where you can laugh, dance, sing, learn, live in peace and be happy.” – Malala Yousafzai
- “Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “Unless we can be like children, we can’t be happy.” – Marianne Williamson
- “A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit.” – Francois Rabelais
- “Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child.”– Ron Wild
- “Children need models rather than critics.” – Joseph Joubert
- “Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “We’re all five-year-olds. We don’t know how to do this thing called life. Are you faking it?” – Byron Katie
- “Old men can make war, but it is children who will make history.” – Ray Merritt
- “We should all be inspired by children: they don’t care about fear and mistakes.” – Maxime Lagacé
- “Only children believe they are capable of everything.” – Paulo Coelho
- “The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” – Peggy O’Mara
- “A child can ask a thousand questions that the wisest man cannot answer.” – Jacob Abbott
- “To raise a nature-bonded child is to raise a rebel, a dreamer, an innovator… someone who will walk their own verdant, winding path.” – Nicolette Sowder
- “The creator in you is the child set free.” – Vince Gowmon
- “The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.” – Billy Graham
- “In a child’s eyes, a mother is a goddess.” – N.K. Jemisin
- “The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “Adults are just outdated children.” – Dr. Seuss 57. “When you are really mature, you will again become childlike. Then your life will again become fun. You will enjoy it, every bit of it you will not be serious. A deep laughter will spread all over your life. It will be more like a dance and less like business.” – Osho
- “Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.” – Mignon McLaughlin
- “Kids go where there is excitement, they stay where there is love.” – Zig Ziglar
- “While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” – Angela Schwindt
- “Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them.” – Lady Bird Johnson
- “It’s not about what you tell your children, but how you show them how to live life.”– Jada Pinkett Smith
- “We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today.” – Stacia Tauscher
- “A little girl is sugar and spice and everything nice—especially when she’s taking a nap.” – Unknown
- “Children remind us to treasure the smallest of gifts, even in the most difficult of times.” – Allen Klein
- “What is a home without children? Quiet.” – Henry Youngman
- “Children are like wet cement whatever falls on them makes an impression.” – Haim Ginott
- “It is time for a return to childhood, to simplicity, to running and climbing and laughing in the sunshine, to experiencing happiness instead of being trained for a lifetime of pursuing happiness.” – L. R. Knost
- “Children take a stand for everything that is possible because they are still in touch with that place inside where everything is possible.” – Vince Gowmon
- “Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.” – Yoda
- “When children pretend, they’re using their imaginations to move beyond the bounds of reality. A stick can be a magic wand. A sock can be a puppet. A small child can be a superhero.” – Mr. Rogers
- “Every child born into the world is a new thought of God, an ever fresh and radiant possibility.” – Kate Douglas Wiggin
- “A child is a beam of sunlight from the Infinite and Eternal, with possibilities of virtue and vice, but as yet unstained.” – Lyman Abbott
- “Children make your life important.” – Erma Bombeck
- “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.” – Carl Sandburg
- “You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.” – Barbara Bush
- “Don’t worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you.” – Robert Fulghum
- “Encourage your child to have muddy, grassy or sandy feet by the end of each day, that’s the childhood they deserve.” – Penny Whitehouse
- “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age.” – Aldous Huxley
- “The urge to draw must be quite deep within us, because children love to do it.”– David Hockney
- “If you can give your child only one gift, let it be enthusiasm.” – Bruce Barton
- “A child’s appetite for new toys appeal to the desire for ownership and appropriation: the appeal of toys comes to lie not in their use but in their status as possessions.” – Christopher Lasch
- “Children of any age flourish with options. Art should be mandatory at all ages.” – Donna Jo Massie
- “Watch what you say and do because little eyes are watching you.” – Reba McEntire
- “No light shines brighter than the smile of a child.” – Ian Semple
- “Children make you want to start life over.” – Muhammad Ali
- “Our most important task as a nation is to make sure all our young people can achieve their dreams.” – Barack Obama
- “Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time.”– Rabindranath Tagore
- “All children have creative power.” – Brenda Ueland
- “There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.“ – Marva Collins
- “Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be.”– Clementine Paddleford
- “Teach your children they’re unique. That way, they won’t feel pressured to be like everybody else.” – Cindy Cashman
- “Sometimes the littlest things take up the most room in your heart.” – Winnie the Pooh
- “In childhood, time is kind. A moment is swallowed whole, by senses open and able.” – Nicoletta Baumeister
- “A baby is as pure as an angel and as fresh as a blooming flower.” – Debasish Mridha.
- “Like stars are to the sky, so are the children to our world. They deserve to shine!” – Chinonye J. Chidolue
- “Children are the only brave philosophers.” – Yevgeny Zamyatin
- “Let my children have music! Let them hear live music. Not noise. My children! You do what you want with your own!” – Charles Mingus 99.“If we nurture the dreams of children, the world will be blessed. If we destroy them, the world is doomed!” – Wess Stafford
- “Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.” – Kay Redfield Jamison
- “Children’s games are hardly games. Children are never more serious than when they play.” – Michel de Montaigne
- “We must teach our children to smell the earth, to taste the rain, to touch the wind, to see things grow, to hear the sun rise and night fall—to care.” – John Cleal
- “Every child has the capacity to be everything.” – Doris Lessing
- “Don’t just teach your kids to read, teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything.” – George Carlin
- “Nothing matters more to a child than a place to call home.” – Brenda Donald
- “We should never permit ourselves to do anything that we are not willing to see our children do.” – Bringhman Young
- “A child is a deep mystery.” – Amelia E. Barr
- “Nature is a tool to get children to experience not just the wider world, but themselves.” – Stephen Moss
- “Children are illuminated textbooks.” – Amos Bronson Alcott
- “Do not keep children to their studies by compulsion, but by play.” – Plato
- “A babe is nothing but a bundle of possibilities.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “Children, no matter how gifted, can’t see far into the future, you know. To them, a year is almost a lifetime.” – John Saul
- “Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.” – Thomas Berry
- “If a child is given love, he becomes loving.” – Dr. Joyce Brothers
- “Never help a child with a task at which he feels he can succeed.” – Maria Montessori
- “Nothing you do for a child is ever wasted.” – Garrison Keillor 117.“Children are unripe and imperfect.” – Aristotle
- “Adults are obsolete children.” – Dr. Seuss
- “A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.” – Paulo Coelho
- “The best thing to spend on your children is your time.” – Louise Hart
- “Children more than ever, need opportunities to be in their bodies in the world—jumping rope, bicycling, stream hopping and fort building. It’s this engagement between limbs of the body and bones of the earth where true balance and centeredness emerge.” – David Sobel
- “If we provide enough space and possibilities for moving freely, then the children will move as well as animals: skillfully, simply, securely, naturally.” – Dr. Emmi Pikler
- “Too much love never spoils children. Children become spoiled when we substitute presents for presence.” – Anthony Witham
- “To me there is no picture so beautiful as smiling, bright-eyed, happy children; no music so sweet as their clear and ringing laughter." – PT Barnum
- “Every year, when you’re a child, you become a different person.” – Alice Munro
- “Accept the children the way we accept trees—with gratitude, because they are a blessing—but do not have expectations or desires. You don’t expect trees to change, you love them as they are.” – Isabel Allende
- “Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decision.” – Denis Waitley
- “Why try to explain miracle to your kids when you can just have them plant a garden.” – Robery Brault
- “Every child needs a parent, grandparent or friend who will say let’s go it’s time for an adventure.” – Penny Whitehouse
- “Just think of the tragedy of teaching children not to doubt.” – Clarence Darrow
- “A children’s story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children’s story in the slightest.” – C.S. Lewis Quote
- “Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them.” – Bill Ayers
- “Today our children are our reflection. Tomorrow they will be our shadows.”– Maralee McKee
- “If you are a parent, open doors to unknown directions to the child so he can explore. Don’t make him afraid of the unknown.” – Rajneesh
- “The only love that I really believe in is a mother’s love for her children.” – Karl Lagerfeld
- “Children need to have stand-and-stare time, time imagining and pursuing their own thinking processes or assimilating their experiences through play or just observing the world around them.” – Teresa Belton
- “The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.”– Walt Disney
- “ It is time to let children be children again.” – L. R. Knost
- “Children see magic because they look for it.” – Christopher Moore
- “How can she expect her children to dream as big as the stars if they can’t lift their heads to gaze upon them?” – Josh Malerman
- “The value of marriage is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults.” – Peter De Vries
- “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement.”– Rachel Carson
- “A child is an uncut diamond. “ – Austin O’Malley
- “Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t soar free.” – C.J. Milbrandt
- “Every child needs a champion.” – Hilary Clinton
- “A daughter is a treasure and a cause of sleeplessness.” – Ben Sirach
- “Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.” – O. Fred Donaldson
- “What we instill in our children will be the foundation upon which they build their future.” – Steve Maracoli
- “Children are living beings—more living than grown-up people who have built shells of habit around themselves.” – Rabindranath Tagore
- “Anyone who does anything to help a child in his life is a hero.” – Mr. Rogers
- “Sons are the anchors of a mother’s life.” – Sophocles
- “I have long felt that the way to keep children out of trouble is to keep them interested in things.” – Walt Disney
- “You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.” – George W. Bush
- “Children need room to imagine and dream.” – Unknown
- “Let children walk with nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity.” – John Muir
- “Oh, magic hour, when a child first knows she can read printed words.” – Betty Smith
- “We can’t control everything our kids do.” – Roseanne Barr
- “It’s a wondrous thing how the wild calms the child.” – Unknown
- “We must all work to make this world worthy of its children.” – Pablo Casals
- “The most important thing that parents can teach their children is how to get along without them.” – Frank A. Clark
- “When a child gives you a gift, even if it’s a rock they just picked up, exude gratitude. It may be the only thing they have to give, and they have chosen to give it to you.” – Dean Jackson
- “Take children seriously… they can teach you so much.” – Melissa Jean
- “I’ve found what makes children happy doesn’t always prepare them to be courageous, engaged adults.” – Brené Brown
- “All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land.” – Deborah Harkness
- “It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.” – J.M. Barrie
- “Women make us poets, children make us philosophers.” – Malcolm de Chazal
- “There is nothing that moves a loving father’s soul quite like his child’s cry.” – Joni Eareckson Tada
- “Each child’s story is worthy of telling.” – Anderson Cooper
- ”There is no friendship, no love, like that of the parent for the child.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “You can’t make your kids do anything. All you can do is make them wish they had. And then, they will make you wish you hadn’t made them wish they had.” – Marshall B. Rosenberg
- ”The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” – Theodore Hesburgh
- “The race of children possesses magically sagacious powers.” – Gail Godwin
- “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”– Martin Luther King, JR.
- “No one is ever satisfied where he is….Only the children know what they’re looking for….” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry,
- “Play is the work of childhood.” – Jean Piaget
- “The world is a wide place where we stumble like children learning to walk. The world is a bright mosaic where we learn like children to see, where our little blurry eyes strive greedily to take in as much light and love and color and detail as they can.” – Jay Woodman
- “Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy.” – Robert A. Heinlein
- “People don’t want children to know what they need to know. They want their kids to know what they ought to need to know.” – Nick Harkaway
- “We gotta start teaching our daughters to be somebodies instead of somebody’s.” – Kifah Shah
- “Children are born with a sense of wonder and an affinity for nature. Properly cultivated, these values can mature into ecological literacy, and eventually into sustainable patterns of living.” – Zenobia Barlow
- “One book, one pen, one child, and one teacher can change the world.” – Malala Yousafzai
- “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.” – Yoda
- ”If you as parents cut corners, your children will too. If you lie, they will too.”– Marian Wright Edelman
- “Seven things every child needs to hear: I love you, I’m proud of you, I’m sorry, I forgive you, I’m listening. This is your responsibility. You have what it takes to succeed.” – Sherrie Campbel
- “You’re only as happy as your least happy child.” – Joe Paterno
- “Grown-up people do not know that a child can give exceedingly good advice even in the most difficult case.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Children have one kind of silliness, as you know, and grown-ups have another kind.” – C.S. Lewis
- “All around you are spirits, child. They live in the earth, the water, the sky. If you listen, they will guide you.” – Grandmother Willow
- “Words are not enough to express the unconditional love that exists between a mother and a daughter.” – Caitlin Houston
- “I am like a child who blows up a bubble of soap. At first the bubble is very small, but it is already spherical. Then the child blows the bubble up very softly until he is afraid that it will burst.” – Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot
- “It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.” – L.R. Knost
- “While we try to teach our children all about life, our children teach us what life is all about.” – Angela Schwindt
- “Raising a daughter is like growing a flower. You give it your best. If you’ve done your job well, she blooms. And after that, she leaves.” – Unknown
- “What greater aspiration and challenge are there for a mother than the hope of raising a great son or daughter?” – Rose Kennedy
- “We carry our childhood with us.” – Gary D. Schmidt
- “Children must have the opportunity to learn that within each range, some people are loathsome and some are delightful.” – Margaret Mead
- “A daughter is a miracle that never ceases to be miraculous… full of beauty and forever beautiful, loving and caring and truly amazing.” – Deanna Beisser
- “Children are happy because they don’t yet have a file in their minds called ‘All the Things That Could Go Wrong.’" – Marianne Williamson
- “Any kid will run any errand for you, if you ask at bedtime.” – Red Skelton
- “Painting like a child does not mean painting with child-like strokes and random scribbles of paints. But rather it’s painting fearless… approaching painting with a new light and courage… learning endlessly without ceasing… painting boldly.” – Elisa Choi
- “A first child is your own best foot forward.” – Barbara Kingsolver 203.“Children are not a zoo of entertainingly exotic creatures, but an array of mirrors in which the human predicament leaps out at us.” – John Updike
- “There’s nothing more contagious than the laughter of young children; it doesn’t even have to matter what they’re laughing about.” – Criss Jami
- “We must teach our children to dream with their eyes open.” – Harry Edwards
- “Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.” – John Steinbeck
- “Having children is like living in a frat house—nobody sleeps, everything’s broken, and there’s a lot of throwing up.” – Ray Romano
- “Children still need a childhood with dirt, mud, puddles, trees, sticks, and tadpoles.” – Brooke Hampton
- “Children are born innocent.” – Nikki Sixx
- “If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them and half as much money.” – Abigail Van Buren
- “Every child deserves a champion – an adult who will never give up on them, who understands the power of connection and insists that they become the best that they can possibly be.” – Rita Pierson
- “Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.” – John Ruskin
- “The way we talk to our children becomes their inner voice.” – Peggy O’Mara
- “Never have more children than you have car windows.” – Erma Bombeck
- “It takes a village to raise a child.“ – African proverb
- “Kids spell love T-I-M-E.“ – John Crudele
- “Only a child sees things with perfect clarity, because it hasn’t developed all those filters which prevent us from seeing things that we don’t expect to see.” – Douglas Adams
- “Children cannot bounce off the walls if we take away the walls.” – Erin Kenny 219.“You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.“ – P. J. O’Rourke
- “The mother’s heart is the child’s schoolroom.“ – Henry Ward Beecher
- “Don’t just tell children about the world. Show them.” – Penny Whitehouse
- “Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They’re its finest fruits.”– Anna Quindlen
- “Children are very wise intuitively; they know who loves them most, and who only pretends.” – V.C. Andrews
- “A daughter is a rainbow—a curve of light through scattered mist that lifts the spirit with her prismatic presence.” – Ellen Hopkins
- “Keep your children wild—don’t make them grow up too fast.” – Brooke Hampton
- “Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing.” – Phyllis Diller
- “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood.” – Berkeley Breathed
- “Stories are like children. They grow in their own way.” – Madeleine L’Engle
- “In quiet times and sleepy times a child can dwell in thoughts of his own, and in songs and stories of his own.” – Margaret Wise Brown
- “Don’t try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.” – Russell Baker
- “Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial.” – L.R. Knost
- “Children can feel, but they cannot analyze their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.” – Charlotte Brontë
- “A child’s life is like a piece of paper on which every person leaves a mark.”– Chinese Proverb
- “A child miseducated is a child lost.” – John F. Kennedy
- “There is a wisdom in children, a kind of knowing, a kind of believing, that we, as adults, do not have. There is a time when a kingdom needs its children.” – Adam Gidwitz
- “If you want children to keep their feet on the ground, put some responsibility on their shoulders.” – Abigail Van Buren
- “If we want our children to move mountains, we first have to let them get out of their chairs.” – Nicolette Sowder
- “To my children, I will say, ‘Fill your skin with kindness and find solace in your solitude. It takes bravery to be kind. But to be brave you will need to know how to stand for something even if you are completely alone.” – Nikita Gill
- “I remind myself that all intelligent children suffer bad dreams.” – Grant Morrison
- “Happy is the son whose faith in his mother remains unchallenged.” – Louisa May Alcott
- “Children just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them.” – Nancy E. Turner
- “Children are natural Zen masters; their world is brand new in each and every moment.” – John Bradshaw
- “Sunsets, like childhood, are viewed with wonder not just because they are beautiful but because they are fleeting.” – Richard Paul Evans
- “That’s what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.” – Ivan Turgenev
- “Our children are only as brilliant as we allow them to be.” – Eric Micha’el Leventhal
- “Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them.” – Mitch Albom
- “I hope our daughters are born with so much fire in their souls, they could put volcanoes and stars to shame.” – Nikita Gill
- “Children are people, and they should have to reach to learn about things, to understand things, just as adults have to reach if they want to grow in mental stature.”– Walt Disney
- “A child’s voice, however honest and true, is meaningless to those who have forgotten how to listen.” – Albus Dumbledore
- “A mother’s love doesn’t make her son more dependent and timid; it actually makes him stronger and more independent.” – Cheri Fuller Check out… 125 Parenting Quotes100 Adoption Quotes75 Quotes About Motherhood
